More miscellany Part ONE (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, September 07, 2022, 11:52 (568 days ago) @ David Turell

PART ONE

DAVID: Answer: Provided with bipedalism, of course they explored possibilities. Without bipedalism so did chimps, but to this day they are still chimps!! Explain our specialness if you can.

dhw: Either local conditions made it necessary for a group of our ancestors to leave the trees and look elsewhere for food, or the same group decided to go and see if life was better on the ground than in the trees. In both cases, they decided that ground was better than trees. It never seems to occur to you that some individuals are different from (or cleverer than) others, even in non-human societies. Speciation occurs when some individuals depart from the existing norm.

DAVID: Wonderful. You've solved the puzzle of speciation. I fully understand human variability.

So you don’t think other animals might have varying degrees of intelligence? Nobody has “solved the puzzle of speciation”, but I take it you now accept the reasonableness of my explanation for the fact that our ancestors diverged from chimps.

New Zealand

QUOTE: […] Evolutionary history is full of strange twists and turns, but also dead ends.[/b]" (dhw’s bold.)

DAVID: Somehow with all the extinctions we have a massive set of ecosystems today that supply food for all. As usual you slice away the past as somehow not leading to the present. See the continuum if you can.

dhw: I am not denying that we had and have past and present ecosystems which provide(d) food for the life forms within them and which through common descent would all have descended from past life forms. However, the vast majority of past life forms and ecosystems did not lead to us and our present ecosystems, which makes nonsense of your theory that every extinct ecosystem was an “absolute requirement” in preparation for us and our ecosystems.

DAVID: I've bolded your complaint. Our world is struggling to have enough food for everyone. That should tell you how important the ecosystems are.

Of course ecosystems are important! Every organism and ecosystem in the history of life has had to have food! That does not mean that every extinct organism and ecosystem in the history of life was an “absolute requirement” in preparation for us and our ecosystems! Please stop this silly dodging!

Importance of ecosysems

DAVID: Australia is still the best example of how humans destroy ecosystems.

We are destroying ecosystems everywhere, and I share your concern. There is no disagreement between us!

dhw: Please explain how the brontosaurus, trilobites and moa provided a direct link (continuum) to our current ecosystems.

DAVID: The systems are here descended from their ancestor systems. You can't deny it!!!

As a believer in evolution and common descent, I have never denied that we and our fellow organisms are descended from past ancestors! What I challenge is your theory that every single organism that ever existed, including all those that were NOT our ancestors or the ancestors of our current foods, were “absolute requirements” in preparation for us. Please stop dodging!

Whales and hippos

QUOTE: “The best they can do is suggest that when organisms live in similar environments, their evolution is constrained in such a way that they develop anatomical similarities that help them survive better.”

dhw: Not “constrained”. It is sheer common sense that if organisms are faced with similar problems, they will come up with similar solutions.

Do you agree?

QUOTE: “… phenomenon of convergence presents fundamental problems for evolutionary biologists who continue to argue that life is historically contingent (contingent meaning it happened by chance and could just as easily have happened differently).”

dhw: A misleading definition: “contingent” also entails dependence on certain factors - in this case environmental changes. These may happen by chance. But some organisms adapt autonomously, and so maybe by extension the same autonomous mechanisms could also design innovations that improve chances of survival and lead to speciation. Not by chance!

Do you agree?

QUOTE: “two coordinated mutations in such long-lived creatures as hippos and whales would take 200 million years to occur by chance.” (David’s bold).

dhw: Same again. You are all obsessed with Darwin’s random mutations. But at least you had the good grace to reproduce Shapiro’s theory of cellular intelligence in your brilliant book The Atheist Delusion. Your buddies never even consider it.

DAVID: Because it is Shapiro's extrapolation theory from his brilliant research.

dhw: Most scientific theories are extrapolations from research. If your buddies ignore the theory, that must be because they don’t know it, or they can’t argue against it.

DAVID: Or because it leads to nothing.

The theory that cells are intelligent leads to a completely different explanation of how evolution has taken place from Darwin’s theory and from the theory that every species has been individually designed by your God. Not exactly “nothing”, is it?


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